The Shadowboxers, comprised of bandmates Scott Tyler, Matt Lipkins, and Adam Hoffman, have been working on music for nearly the past eight years. They finally found their sound and are almost ready to share their new music with the world. Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing them, and they are not only great musicians, but great people as well. They have found a way to fuse together genres such as pop, soul, and jazz to create their own unique sound. They were discovered by Justin Timberlake and signed to his artist development label, Villa 40, and have fostered a great relationship over the past couple years, in which great music has been created. Their most popular hit thus far has reached over 2.5 million streams on Spotify, and they've only just begun. Their current releases are amazing, and their live show is even better, so I hope you'll feel like you got to know them a little bit through the Q and A that we did:

Question #1: How did you come up with the band name The Shadowboxers? I feel as though a band's name says a lot about who they are. So what does your band name mean to each of you and the band collectively?

Scott:

Shadowboxing is the art of preparing for a fight. A fighter essentially spars his shadow, working on both his attack and defense. It's a very rhythmic process and one that we find a lot of significance in. When we were trying to come up with a name, we were three college kids who all respected classic, soulful music and culture, and wanted our name to reflect that. We also pride ourselves on putting in the work, meaning we study the greats who have come before us and never play a show without being practiced and ready. There is something playful about shadowboxing too, in that like a dog trying to catch its tail, there's this endless desire to out smart and outdo yourself. All of these elements represent us individually and as a band. We practice, we challenge ourselves, and we have fun doing it.

Question #2: How has your musical upbringings (such as music you listened to growing up and/or your musical education) influenced the type of music that you perform?

Adam:

A lot. All three of us grew up in very musical households and so much of the music that really inspires us is the music that was playing around the house as we were each growing up. And there's a ton of overlap there. I started recording in my bedroom when I was 14 and played in a band all through high school. Matt did the same and Scott was writing songs in Nashville at a very young age. So while we were listening to the current music of the time (mostly just Nappy Roots too be honest) we were also being educated at home on Motown, classic rock, jazz and R&B. We were all very lucky that way.

Question #3: What was it like to be signed to Justin Timberlake's artist development label, Villa 40? If you could, can you walk me through the process of how it all happened?

Matt:

It was initially a surreal invitation to collaborate that pretty quickly became a reality. Justin reached out on Twitter (yes, he slipped into the DM's, as one sometimes needs to do these days) and called us a few days later. Maybe a week after that we were having dinner at his hotel in Atlanta the night before a show on the 20/20 Experience Tour and it was there at that first meeting that we started talking shop; everyone involved wanted this to be a creative collaboration, where Justin could help us hone in on the sound that we would eventually find. And after that, as goes with many collaborations, it took some time for us to figure out how to best work together. It took years of sending over home demos and getting notes back on direction, multiple recording sessions, and some time writing together to really figure out how Justin could contribute the most. By this summer in NYC, I think we'd finally done our homework on each other so that when it came time to record, we hit it on the head and everyone was able to lock in their specific skillset to bring the best out of the songs we had.

Question #4: The band has been active since 2008. How has the vision or overall vibe of the band changed over the years, musically?

Scott:

When we started, we knew we wanted to put our voices together to make three part harmony. Besides that, we wanted to write and play every genre or style that moved us - from CSN [Crosby, Stills and Nash] to the Beatles to U2 to Prince. You can hear that ambition in our first recordings, this desire to do everything that we were fans of. Over the years, we split all of those styles that we want to tackle into various pockets of sound, and dove into one of them, pop, with a more focused ambition. All of the other things we want to do or say will come at some point, but we've just learned patience and developed identity along the way, leading us to have a unified, identifiable sound that feels like a first step.

Question #5: Walk me through your writing process. Do you guys sit down to have writing sessions, wait for inspiration to strike, write separately and then come together, start with lyrics or melody, etc.?

Adam:

At this point, we've literally done every iteration possible. For the past 3 years we have really focused most of our energy on songwriting and experimenting with the process. We've written well over 120 songs in that timeframe. But initially, it was mostly just one of us bringing in a complete song. That rarely happens anymore. All of our new material was written completely collaboratively and we've learned over the years what each of our strengths are and how best to work together so that everyone is firing on all cylinders. To write a song, you have to be willing to be vulnerable and sort of overexposed, so the vibe and the energy in the room is the most important thing. Once we figured out how to hold that space, the songs started coming much easier and going much deeper.

Question #6: How was covering Leo Sayer's "More Than I Can Say", with TimMcGraw? I saw that you guys filmed it in the bathroom which must have been very interesting.

Matt:

Man, it felt like it was over before it started! We learned the song that afternoon in our hotel room ("Leo Sayer? The 'You Make Me Feel Like Dancing' guy?? Ok, let's do it."), and then headed down to our green room. Tim and Faith have an absolutely amazing crew with them, and their social media and content team had already wired up our bathroom for optimal sound and inconspicuously decorated the sinks with candles. With all that tile and porcelain, the sound actually bounced around nicely, so we were pretty surprised when we started practicing. Maybe fifteen minutes later, Tim's band joined us for a round and then in the middle of running the tune down, Tim walked in and I guess he liked what he heard because the next take was the one in the video!

Question #7: I read that you guys went to Emory University and that's where the first stages of the band began. How did you all initially decide to come together and make music? How did that later turn into what is now The Shadowboxers?

Scott:

Emory is not a music school. So in that sense, when three guys met each other who all had the same interests and similar abilities, it was a no-brainer that we'd come together. There were no other players, no other prospects, so we didn't have to decide on each other. We were the only ones. We had all written music in high school, we all like the sound of our voices together, and that's how The Shadowboxers was born.

Question #8: Your song "Build the Beat" has over 2.5 million streams on Spotify. What was it like when that song started to gain traction and climb the charts?

Adam:

2.5 million of anything is a lot, even if we're talking probiotics. And even though that's not breaking any records, it's still an incredibly gratifying feeling to know that 2.5 million times across the world people have taken the time to live in that song. We do what we do to connect with people. And the more the merrier. So yeah, it's been an awesome feeling to see that song take on a life of its own.

Question #9: Even though "Build the Beat" is your most successful song as of date, which song of yours are you the most proud of? And for what reasons? To follow that what song of yours do you relate to the most? And for what reasons? Which song of yours was the most fun to record? Why?

Matt:

Definitely "Wolves". Of the songs we've recorded recently, it's the oldest by many years (I think we first workshopped it at Adam's parents place in Iowa back in 2014), and its proven to us that some songs just need and deserve more love than others....like relationships, which is also why I think I relate to this song the most. That song is one of the few we've recently recorded that was mostly written by the three of us (and writing together was how this whole thing started), but if we showed you the original demo and then the final mix in its current state, you might struggle to recognize that you were listening to the same song until the chorus. We are pretty good at this point at collaborating but once we have an idea of what a song should sound like, you'd be hard pressed to find an example in our past where we've said something like, "you know what? Let's cut half this song, change most of the sounds, and give it a completely different vibe, cool?" Whether it's confidence in our gut or just resilience against giving away that much of a creation, our co-producer K-Kov saved that song by shaking those notions, because we'd recorded it twice already and still didn't feel like we'd nailed it. Once he was like, "guys, I know you know this song like the back of your hand, but we're gonna try some shit out and I want you to roll with it", it was actually really freeing. This song was the most fun for me to record,because K-Kov lifted that pressure of being precious. It's corny writing this, but I relate more to this song now because just like the lyrics within, we had to stop holding this songs hand to see if it could fight its way out. So with nothing holding it or us back, we were all able to cut only the fat away and put the song sonically in a place that didn't feel over-emotional, it just felt right. So we're proud of the fact that we saw that song through and we've literally nurtured it over the years to grow to its current state...which BUMPS.

Question #10: What day of your musical careers has made you the proudest thus far? Why?

Scott:

June of this year we were in the studio in New York working with Justin on our record. At the end of the two and a half week session, after endless changes and adjustments, Justin listened to what will be our first single and told us that we finally have it. At this point, we'd been working with him for nearly three years and have been hearing him say that we're "close" and we're "getting there" for so long, thinking that we've got THE song only to scrap it and start again, so by him telling us that we finally have the song worthy of the bright lights and big stages was extremely validating. I remember looking around the room at the other two guys and thinking about writing songs together in our dorm room eight years ago, and how far we'd come to get here. We're very proud of the work we'v put in and what we've been through together, and it will make everything coming our way even sweeter.

Question #11: What has been your best performance/show thus far? Why?

Adam:

We played a festival show this past summer in Detroit called MoPop. It was one of the first shows where we were playing all of this new material. And to see a crowd of people who had never heard these songs and probably never heard us really connect with the new songs was a kind of validation that I think we had all been dreaming of in the studio when we were recording.Obviously releasing the songs will be the full circle of that cycle, but that show was electric and it showed me the potential that we're staring down.

Question #12: What are you looking forward to in the future? What can weexpect in terms of new music in the upcoming future?

Matt:

I'm looking forward to playing shows where people know every song they're hearing. Our audience and fans have earned that ten times over, and while it's been so much fun initiating dance parties for all these years that we've been honing in on this next direction, I think we're all looking forward to creating a little sense of familiarity. And then cherishing that like nothing else, and THEN shaking it up for people again. But yeah, we've been a band for a long time and I don't feel selfish at all saying that I'm ready for the audience to be able to sing these songs back at us, because I think they are too.

From the sound of it, The Shadowboxers are ready to show the world what they've got to offer. Their Timezone Tour picks back up in Denver, Colorado on September 12th. But they're actually coming through the Los Angeles area on September 16th at the El Rey Theatre. If you haven't already, definitely buy tickets and come see The Shadowboxers' great show. You'll be sure to have an exceptional time.